I did this one to test render settings based on Martin's (Tangled-Universe) setting suggestion.
Detail 0.8 Anti-Aliasing 24 GI relative detail 2 GI sample quality 4 GI Blur radius 6
Supersample Prepass Mitchell-Netravali
Edit Sampling settings First sampling level 1/64 Pixel Noise threshold 0.05
Atmosphere 16 sample Clouds 5 samples (they are up high above the ground level) Optimal
Walli's Pines from Walli's Plant pack (I changed the specular value to 0.225)
1024 x 480 in 12 hrs 7 mins on a Pentium 4 HT 3.0 gHz
Nice to see you tried these insane settings :)
I wouldn't recommend it out of the box to anyone, only if you don't mind rendering a bit longer and for a mostly subtle difference.
The rendertime for this one isn't that bad actually.
I'm a bit surprised to see it didn't work out very well, to be honest.
My experience with this technique is mostly with the cubic b-spline which IMO benefits from this alternative approach.
In this particular case I'd say that the populations would benefit from slightly brighter textures (increase the diffuse colour value) and some more translucency.
No matter what sun angle and elevation, with GI 2/4/6 you should have been able to see detail in the shadows.
It's interesting anyway. For instance you could render it again with 8 atmo samples and see how that goes. Just out of curiosity.
You'll quickly see that you develop a feeling for the settings and that tweaking adaptive sampling can be a valuable option for optimizing objects/atmosphere rendering.
If used inappropriately it could also skyrocket rendertimes :)
Cheers,
Martin
I like the shape and coloring of the terrain and the great distribution of vegetation ...great job Henry.
The translucency was maxed out. I added some specular to the needles to brighten them up; maybe more is needed. I'm thinking of making a close up render with more plant types.
I thought about lowering the atmosphere sample quality. The cloud sampling was already quite low, so I did not think it would be good.
One thing I should have done is increase the spacing of the pines. They are quite dense here. That would allow more lighting in and brighten them up.
if I am not wrong, you can manually add higher values for those parameters, probably worth a try.
I replaced these pines with your SN___ pines from Silva 3D. I should have just deleted the populations and then used the better pines. I was getting strange streaks... Probably the textures not mapping correctly. Will try again!
Henry, I have all the XFrog plants as well as NWDA stuff, so if you'd like I could help you a bit to figure out what's going on.
You can find my e-mail in my profile or send me an IM.
Cheers,
Martin
Thanks Martin. I tried Walli's suggestion. That did the trick.
Lovely subject - looks very natural.
Quote from: njeneb on October 25, 2011, 05:52:27 PM
Thanks Martin. I tried Walli's suggestion. That did the trick.
Good to hear it helped. Looking forward to the new render ;)
One remark though. Values for translucency >1 are possible, but logically give unnatural results as it indicates more than 100% of the incoming light will pass through the object's surface.
You may notice this could become problematic in shadow areas of your render where things tend to look very plastic and fake.
New render. I used Walli's pines and dry grasses. Also his Wood Anemone and Solidago.
Very nice Henry. I would be tempted to place the sun in the center and up at about 70 to 75 degrees. Heavy up the haze a bit. Consider a second sun 180 degrees opposite the main one at very low strength (back-lighting). This would be trying to create an effect similar to Ryan Archer's 'Golden Forest'.
I did a very small test render set to try out lighting. 320 x 150 does not give much detail. I settled on this light since I had to go to work; rendered it overnight.
The rock faces need more detail also. I'll give your sun/lighting a try Bob. 8) It could be interesting.
The rocks look very nice to me Henry :)
Not sure about the trees . I would try other trees or-and different distribution or scale maybe.
I traded in the pines for Walli's SI3D Pine trees. These look much better.
The lighting is looking very washed out with the two suns. I am going to try ambient occlusion instead of a 2nd light.
Close up is impressive to say the least, rock faces are topshelf
This will have to be put aside for a month or so. I don't have enough memory to render it.
Also, the new machine is delayed some more. I can't afford the RAM and the HD at the same time. I'll buy the HD now. Then I can order any cables I need with the RAM later.
Unfortunately hard drives have gone up massively in price recently. You might want to wait on the HD, they're not likely to get any more expensive, and they just might get cheaper as the impact of the flooding becomes more clear.
- Oshyan
New render of this using the new computer. Detail 0.5375, AA 24 with 1/16 samples for the First sampling level and Pixel noise threshold of 0.15. Supersample prepass and GI details checked. GI 2/4/6, with a 4 hr 22 min render time.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/njeneb/6349710165/sizes/o/in/photostream/
http://njeneb.deviantart.com/#/d4gcmux
Looking very nice, Henry. Congrat's on the new machine! :)
I bet there wouldn't be much noticeable visual difference(if any at all actually) and with a much faster render time by using AA=6 at max samples/non-adaptive.
36 is a very generous amount of samples per pixel and 36 all round would probably give you an equally nice result in about 1/4 of the render time than the massive amount of max' samples(576) taken at AA=24 with first sampling at 1/16, which gives you a minimum of 36 samples. I think that really is overkill and wasting unnecessary time, time that could be used making your next scene! ;)
I'm not taking into account the GI surface details as that'll be what's adding most of the render time here in this scene, but try out both methods of AA sampling on a different test scene that has 'GISD' unchecked, save both results and flick between them in your picture viewer, I'd bet the only real difference will be much less render time.
I might be completely wrong but I don't think the visual difference will even be noticeable in each image back-to-back.
EDIT:
I ran a test on one of Walli's trees at; AA=6 at max samples/AA=12 at 1/4 samples. Both give a minimum sample count of '36'.
Ignoring the ridiculous total render times for both because of my slow computer, the one at AA=12 took more than double the time and there's pretty much no gain in quality(and AA=24 at 1/4 sampling would have be lots longer still for a very minimal gain, I quit the render as it was just too much for a quick test on my computer but the area that did render wasn't much better).
It is very slightly softer but I think the extra render time far outweighs any visual gain that comes from using such extreme sampling levels. Maybe it's just me but I don't think it's worth it at all to be using values like 576 samples per pixel when even 144 samples took double the time and turns out pretty identical. I understand there will be special cases where it would work very well but in general I don't think I'd waste the time. Thoughts, anyone?
[attachimg=#]
Quote from: dandelO on November 16, 2011, 08:57:46 AM
I bet there wouldn't be much noticeable visual difference(if any at all actually) and with a much faster render time by using AA=6 at max samples/non-adaptive.
36 is a very generous amount of samples per pixel and 36 all round would probably give you an equally nice result in about 1/4 of the render time than the massive amount of max' samples(576) taken at AA=24 with first sampling at 1/16, which gives you a minimum of 36 samples. I think that really is overkill and wasting unnecessary time, time that could be used making your next scene! ;)
There's a little but significant error in your calculation of AA samples when rendering with AA24 with 1/16th first samples.
This setting does not mean the
minimum samples is 36 per pixel, but that 36 is the
average number of samples.
What the pixel noise threshold does is setting a threshold for noise upon which the renderer decides to apply more or less samples to the pixel.
It depends on the initial level of noise too and I think Matt assumed that the noise distribution is equal, like gaussian, when he decided to show the setting of the average number of samples being used.
So effectively you'll never know if the average number of samples, 36 in this case, is applied everywhere.
Also, you'll never know the minimum samples used.
All you know is that when you use higher pixel noise threshold levels that the number of samples being used tends to be skewed towards less and that it is unlikely you'll use a lot more than the average samples and VERY unlikely you'll use the max number of samples.
When you render with "AA6 full" every pixel will have 36 AA samples applied, regardless whether necessary or not.
However, if you render with AA16 or higher with 1/16th first, then in some noise-regions more AA might be applied compared to AA6 full because the threshold hasn't been reached yet.
This is the reason why these high AA levels can give very good results without having crazy rendertimes.
The pixel noise threshold is an important factor for this.
In all cases I think the rendertime is (somewhat) longer and it's up to the user to decide whether it's worth it or not.
I bet the difference IS there at all and am pretty sure that it is noticeable, though pretty subtle.
For the B-spline filter the difference is the easiest to notice.
Quote from: dandelO on November 16, 2011, 08:57:46 AM
I'm not taking into account the GI surface details as that'll be what's adding most of the render time here in this scene, but try out both methods of AA sampling on a different test scene that has 'GISD' unchecked, save both results and flick between them in your picture viewer, I'd bet the only real difference will be much less render time.
I might be completely wrong but I don't think the visual difference will even be noticeable in each image back-to-back.
GISD is mostly unnecessary to use.
I recall Matt only recommended it when there's a lot of small scale dark shadows in the image, like dense vegetation with not much direct light on it.
Not many scenes have this kind of lighting so don't require it and if they do it helps a little, but surely isn't a magical setting worth the at least 2x longer render. I haven't found many cases for GISD in 6 years, so I think the most noticeable effect indeed is on rendertime :)
Hi, Martin. I edited my above post with a comparison, I'll render out one at AA=24 at 1/16 to see just what the difference is there too.
Yes, of course you are correct about the averaging of samples used, I just referred to how it is labelled in the pixel sampler node. At AA=6/max, then the mean number of samples shouldn't drop below 36.
There will definitely be some quality gain with higher sampling, my point is that I just don't think that the extra render time justifies the task of doing so, in most cases.
You made the same mistake again in your comparison ;)
It's not minimum, but average, the render pixel sampler doesn't mention minimum as far as I know?
edit: I see your image now, thanks :) it's indeed the minimum samples, with an average ;) (the average number of minimum samples. So it's not 36, but could also be less, or more. Depends on the pixel noise threshold, for instance.
Is the pixel noise threshold the same in the comparison?
It's not the best comparison anyway, since it's perhaps a bit too simple.
In more complex and dense scenes the subtle differences are definitely there.
I do agree with you that it does not always gives an improvement and that it adds rendertime.
That's something I have been saying from the beginning that it "might" look better, but not guaranteed.
Seems general perception is shifting towards "TU says we should always do this". Definitely not.
I started suggesting this to people to 1) find out how it might look as it can give better results, in my opinion 2) they can handle it with their machines, so rendertime is less relevant (especially for crazy guys like me who render overnight and thus care less :)) and 3) most importantly to provoke/induce thinking about TG2's renderer and it's settings.
The latter I definitely succeeded in :)
But it does.
I think that it is the average but just cannot drop below the count that says 'min samples per pixel' and when non-adaptive is used then a set 36 samples will always be taken.
[attachimg=#]
Regardless, I still think in most cases I couldn't justify using such high sampling when the extra time far outweighs the quality gain, that's all I'm saying.
Cheers, Martin. :)
Quote from: dandelO on November 16, 2011, 10:33:13 AM
But it does.
I think that it is the average but just cannot drop below the count that says 'min samples per pixel' and when non-adaptive is used then a set 36 samples will always be taken.
Yes it can drop below that count, otherwise it wouldn't say "mean" behind the value.
So a mean number of minimum samples. With 36 samples being the mean and 50% of the samples being <36 or >36 for all the pixels.
When you average the mimimum of samples used for every pixel the value will be 36.
A bit strange perhaps to understand why it is depicted like that in the node, but it's a bit comparible to statistics which I use for my work.
I know samples are averaged when adaptive sampling is used and I believe that is where the term 'mean' is used.
But when non-adaptive sampling is used, then you are guaranteed to use the set number of samples per pixel described in the sampler, is that not right? That's what non-adaptive sampling says to me anyway.
Cheers, man! :)
Simply for completeness sake, and for my own curiosity, I rendered the same 'jaggy raytraced object on a plain background' scene at AA=24 at 1/16.
[attachimg=#]
Pretty much no gain in quality that is worth me spending the massive amount of extra render time on.
The quality is indeed marginally better with the higher AA but it still doesn't justify using it in *most cases to me.
This is, of course, only one instance and only RTO was used here, I'm not saying that it won't be beneficial in some cases but in a scene like Henry has posted here I think the extra time is really just wasted, comparable results are achievable in less than 1/4 of the time.
Sorry to deviate so much from discussing your image here, Henry, but I think you could really get the render time down on such scenes(without the GI surface details, of course, that really isn't necessary here at all in my opinion) without using such extreme AA settings.
I too think there is nothing to gain from this strategy, that would be visually noticable. I think your comparison demonstrates that pretty obviously. Maybe there are situations where this strategy would produce a visually noticable difference, but nobody seems to know what these situations could be. It's definitely not required for a "Walli Pine before standard background" render, that's for sure :)
Again guys, I'm only saying it's interesting to explore it as it sometimes can give a subtle and nice difference (especially in heavy object scenes and not examples like the above as Frank pointed out ;) + the response to his attempt to try this out seem to be positive, or not?) and with fast machines it's not too much to handle.
Hence I only recommended it to Zaai and Henry so far as they have enough brute render power to try this without bleeding too much for lost time.
Of course this should never be the common way to do it, I never said that. Still it seems some think I say to everybody that they should do it this way(?).
So everybody should continue with the common way to do it, by keeping everything reasonable within the standards which most of us experienced users recommend to everyone.
If I opt for something different to try, it does not mean I want to change "the standard" ;)
But I'll be careful next time with suggesting something out of the ordinary :)
Martin is perfectly right to say it does not justify the rendertime for him. Mostly it indeed doesn't, agreed to that before.
For the future it can be very useful, as Jon figured out this approach is one of the very few, possibly the only one!, to render out an animation with lots of trees with small (specular) leaves without flickering and/or popping.
I think I've explained myself enough now why I suggested to try this :)
Cheers,
Martin
I didn't think you were suggesting that this be the common way to do things from now on, not at all, Martin.
Your ideas are always well educated and greatly appreciated and I knew there must be some instances that this option would be beneficial, I just didn't think it would be very beneficial for Henry in this scene and that's why I said so.
I decided to do a test just to see if there was any general quality gain from adding huge amounts of possible samples. I found pretty much none for a general setting of jaggy objects on plain background.
It certainly doesn't justify me to do it this way, not on this piece of crap pc, anyway! I just thought Henry could get a much faster render by using a more standard method in this instance.
Thanks also for the information above about when it would be very useful to use the AA this way, for popping speculars etc, I would probably never have worked that one out and I shudder to think what I'd do if I was facing such a situation and had to rely on doing this! I'd likely just throw in the towel and say, nope, this isn't the scene for me! :D
Cheers, dude!
Quote from: Tangled-Universe on November 16, 2011, 12:30:20 PM
Of course this should never be the common way to do it, I never said that. Still it seems some think I say to everybody that they should do it this way(?).
easy my friend, yes you never said that :)
Yes, and I do apologize if I sounded like I was in any way rubbishing you or insinuating that you would advise everyone to do things this way, Martin. That's really not what was intended at all, so please don't think it was meant this way.
In fact you did say in your first post here that you wouldn't recommend these settings to just anyone straight out of the box.
Again, I just thought Henry would be done much quicker for essentially not much drop in quality with a more standard approach, is all. :)
No worries guys :) I'm not upset, though it may look like I am. Obviously I'm sensitive in situations where I feel I'm partially being heard :)
(then it has nothing to do with the technical side of the discussion, that is just fine as it is to me)
Perhaps I should keep the more advanced stuff a bit from/below the radar as I admittedly tend to confuse things or people with it, so I'm the one to blame first :P
I can see a contrast difference on Dandelo's renders which is better using higher settings.
I have noticed that the Pixel noise threshold setting can reduce render time greatly when using the other settings on this window. I render a crop with 32 samples and 1/16. Then at 16 samples and compare them. For this last Simon Buttes render 24 seemed to be good. The noise threshold of 0.15 or 0.2 works well.
I am not sure, but I like to keep these numbers on a AA 8/16/24/32 setting. I think Jo or Matt suggested using AA 8 or adjusting the AA by 2, higher or lower. But when high AA and the reduced samples of 1/16 the AA 8/16/24/32 seem better for testing and finally rendering.
Guys could the higher settings more useful in animations? I think i remember that the settings were useful for this?...no?
I have not tried to use these settings for an animation yet. UnChecking the GI options would speed up things.
Quote from: Tangled-Universe on November 16, 2011, 10:19:32 AM
This setting does not mean the minimum samples is 36 per pixel, but that 36 is the average number of samples.
It means the minimum samples per pixel, effectively. The only reason it says 'mean' is because sometimes the minimum samples per pixel is not a whole number, so some pixels overlap a larger number of minimum sample points while some overlap fewer. This only happens when your AA number is something other than 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 etc.
Thanks, Matt.
And the 'mean' label only applies to adaptive sampling. I thought so.
Non-adaptive guarantees the set number of samples described in the min/max fields will be taken, since they are the same number, while adaptive sampling can differ(mean) because not all the sample numbers are whole.
Thanks Matt,
Being a scientist myself the naming convention of "minimum number(mean)" can only mean there's variation in the minimum number of samples for that specific AA# setting.
Meaning there's a range/distribution of minimum samples being used in the image and the average/mean of that range is the number being showed in the UI is "minimum number(mean)".
However, it seemed that there's slight variability in the minimum samples for every AA# setting and that that minimum is constant without a range/distribution. So every AA# has it's own unique deviation for the given number of minimal samples.
Picky of course, but just an example to illustrate that the naming convention at first hand gives a different idea than the actual meaning/working of the thing, which ultimately may lead to confusement. Completely fed by different backgrounds of course.
So perhaps it's best to remove the "mean" part of the setting, since it seems not to be so relevant at all?
Cheers,
Martin
Quote from: Kadri on November 16, 2011, 08:01:49 PM
Guys could the higher settings more useful in animations? I think i remember that the settings were useful for this?...no?
That's right Kadri, I had an animation with a lot of shrubbery/trees in the populations. Some had quite thin geometry with billboard leaves, tightly packed together, which were giving me some flicker trouble when moving the camera.
The solution was to send around 64 initial rays at the pixel being rendered, to get the most accurate average of that area. And to keep down the use of the next layer of rays being triggered, we up'd the threshold to around 0.2.
The theory was... A pixel at render time is calculated by throwing a ray at that pixel area in your scene. The more rays you throw at that pixel area (which could be several meters of real estate in your scene), the more detailed average result you'll get back. This meant that when the next frame renderered the same pixel area, there would a more significant chance of it being closer to the previous frame's in colour and luminence. Less flicker.
We had a 720p scene rendering in 1.5 hrs a frame.
Thanks Hetzen :)
Quote from: Tangled-Universe on November 22, 2011, 02:31:34 AM
So perhaps it's best to remove the "mean" part of the setting, since it seems not to be so relevant at all?
Yes, that might be best.
Quote from: dandelO on November 18, 2011, 05:56:23 PM
Thanks, Matt.
And the 'mean' label only applies to adaptive sampling. I thought so.
Non-adaptive guarantees the set number of samples described in the min/max fields will be taken, since they are the same number, while adaptive sampling can differ(mean) because not all the sample numbers are whole.
It's not really because of the adaptive nature. It's due to it being impossible to have the same number of samples on each pixel if you divide the number of samples by 4, 16 or 64. For example, if I have an AA of 5, that means there are up to 25 samples per pixel. They are arranged in a grid of 5x5 samples per pixel. If I have one level of adaptability, the first level is a grid that contains only 1/4th of the maximum samples. If I divide 25 by 4, I don't get a whole number. Samples are interpolated across multiple pixels, and some pixels overlap more samples than others. In reality, the actual number of samples that contribute to a pixel is even more complicated than that because of the anti-aliasing filter being used. So I suppose really it's only a guide.